Yesterday I went to Oklahoma City’s version of the National Day for Fair Pay protest, held on the corner of N.W. 23rd Street and Broadway, a street corner nestled between I-235 and McDonalds. Next door to that is Ace Cash Express, where all you need is a job and an income of at least $1000 a month to borrow money at an exorbitant interest rate. Like most things involving money, if you’re broke, you pay more. Even in Oklahoma City, where the cost of living is 14.5% below the national average, $1000 won’t come close to getting you through the month.

According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) “Living Wage Calculator”, workers would have to earn $8.19 an hour just to survive in Oklahoma County, nearly a dollar above the current minimum wage. That is, assuming you never eat out, never do anything recreational that costs money, never miss a day of work, and never have a sick child or any other medical emergency. And god forbid your 15-year-old car should ever break down.

Another source, universallivingwage.org, lists a more realistic living wage of $10.17 per hour just to live in a “0 bedroom apartment” in Oklahoma City. If you’d like your apartment or house to have an actual bedroom, you’ll have to earn a minimum of $11.10. That’s a full $3.85 above the current national (and Oklahoma’s) minimum wage.

So on December 5th, while CNBC pundits debated the merit of a person who works a full 40-hour week being able to actually survive; referring to it as another Washington giveaway, thousands of protesters across America took to the streets. Waving signs that said “We are worth more” and “Fight for 15”, they set up near stores and fast food restaurants that are notorious for underpaying their employees, simply because it’s legal and they don’t care.

While corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonalds rake in massive profits, taxpayers subsidize the working poor through food stamps and other welfare programs. To put it in perspective, the four members of the Walton family are worth $100 billion, more than all of the Wal-Mart workers in the entire world combined. In the meantime, minimum wage workers at Wal-Mart and at the McDonalds on N.W. 23rd and Broadway in Oklahoma City would have to go next door to the payday loan shark just to make it through... more

Welcome to the new age of politics, where a handful of corporate shills elected under the guise of responsible government can hold the entire country hostage under the threat of collapsing the economy. It’s “Give us what we want or we’ll bring down the entire world: the sequel.” First we break the bank bailing out Wall Street, giving tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy, and financing unwinnable wars. And now, it’s payback time.

It seems our country’s lawmakers have finally come to an agreement on how many poor, elderly, students, and disabled will be sacrificed in the name of surrender to the ruling class. According to the Associated Press, the agreement will mean that states will lose federal funding over the next decade for, among other things, the Head Start school readiness program, Meals on Wheels, worker training initiatives, transit agencies, and education grants that serve disabled children. ... more

Welcome to the new age of politics, where a handful of corporate shills elected under the guise of responsible government can hold the entire country hostage under the threat of collapsing the economy. It’s “Give us what we want or we’ll bring down... more

80% is more than just a majority, it is not even a mandate, it’s enough to start a workers’ revolution. Vote out every politician at every level who doesn’t support a living wage. Demand that your city and state enact a living wage, and demand that... more

In poll after poll, global warming (or any other environmental issue) fails to show up as a concern of the public at all. Polls show also that the percentage of the public who accept that the data shows the globe is warming and that humans are... more

My idea is this: we stop locking people up for the crimes they commit. Instead, we pay those people who haven’t committed crimes for not committing them! It’s simple, it’s brilliant, and I just know it will work... more

When I searched "Democrat," I discovered at roughly half of the results were nasty comments about Democrats. When I searched "Republican," only about five percent of them were nasty comments about Republicans. Many of the nasty comments... more